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TANZANIA
(eTN) - Police vans and city authority officials are scattered all over
in most key places of Dar es Salaam city, supervising cleanliness on
preparations to welcome the American President who jets in this Monday.
Ranked
among the top dirtiest cities in Africa, Tanzania’s commercial capital,
Dar es Salaam, was established in 1857 by the Sultan of Zanzibar,
Seyyid Al-Majjd, as the designated new capital. He moved to this new
city in 1862, but died before accomplishing his development plans for
the new capital.
He
named this city Dar es Salaam or “Haven of Peace” for its good weather,
a good port position in the Indian Ocean, and a good direction of trade
winds.
Today, Dar es Salaam is growing to be known as one of the dirtiest cities in the world, holding the 12th position as a dirtiest.
The
coming of the US President to Tanzania has been a welcome to clean
environmental campaigners who had worked hard to maintain cleanliness
within Dar es Salaam city, but with little or no support from City
Fathers including city mayors, councilors, and executive directors.
“We
are happy to welcome Mr. Obama in this city. At last, authorities rose
from slumber to clean the roads and flash out vagabonds from their
hideouts,” an environmental campaigner, Mary Jone, told eTN.
Laxity,
corruption, and poor performance within Dar es Salaam’s City Council
authorities have brought about a total failure to make this commercial
capital of Tanzania a clean and tourist friendly site.
It
has become difficult and cumbersome for tourists and other
holidaymakers to walk and stroll along the roads heading to and from
their booked hotels due to the dirty environment, vagabonds, and muggers
who take advantage of the dirty environment to scare and rob tourists.
Residents
in this city do not know why government authorities have failed to draw
up plans that would make Tanzania’s capital a tourist friendly city, as
are other African cities including Durban, Johannesburg, and Cape Town
in South Africa; Harare in Zimbabwe; Gaborone, Cairo, Abidjan in Cote
D’Ivore; or other northern Tanzanian tourist towns of Arusha and Moshi,
all of which are clean and tourist friendly urban centers.
Among
other environmental hazards and key hosts of foreign visitors and
tourists to Dar es Salaam are the Black Indian Crows, scattered at every
corner of the city’s skies. Swarming swiftly from one place to another,
Indian crows pose a big environmental menace to city residents.
They
are able to carry anything they think is edible, like pieces of a
bread, a piece of meat, fish, and dead animals left to rot on streets.
They snatch baby caps to build their nests, and they snatch
newly-hatched chicks from open grounds, along with anything they find
attractive to them.
US
President Obama will manage to spot some of these birds when he visis
the US embassy grounds in Dar es Salaam, where the crows don’t recognize
the power of the US, though the former US ambassador to Tanzania, Mr.
Robert V. Royall, had once taught them a lesson.
Some
years back, when he was appointed the US ambassador to Tanzania by
former US President George W. Bush, he one day found himself with
unwanted black fowl visitors in his lawn garden - the crows.
The
hundreds of crows cavorting and cawing on the new embassy lawns were
just too much for the US ambassador, so he called in members of his
Marine detachment, and they marched to the back of the compound,
carrying 12-gauge shotguns.
Sitting
in a golf cart, the ambassador waited behind tall grass. The crows
landed all around him. And he began firing birdshot, he told the Boston
Globe.
"We
were successful - to a point," the former envoy said of his unusual
assignment. He said the many late afternoons spent hunting resulted in
the killing of about 1,000 crows.
“Our
success, actually, was almost nil. The crow population has steadily
grown to an estimated one million birds today,” he said.
The
ever-so-common bird, imported from India more than a century ago by a
sultan of Zanzibar to eat garbage, is almost universally reviled in this
coastal East African city.
These
crows have wiped out other bird populations and raised concerns that
they could possibly pass on avian influenza, because they are known to
attack and eat young chickens.
The new US embassy, which was built after an al Qaeda bomb attack in
1998 destroyed parts of the old one, is one of the hot spots for crows, apparently because it has several water sources in its backyard.
1998 destroyed parts of the old one, is one of the hot spots for crows, apparently because it has several water sources in its backyard.
The
US embassy in Tanzanian is decorated with green environment, made up of
beautiful trees with mango tees nearby, all providing a good habitat
for black crows.
Michael
Retzer, the then former US ambassador who took over from Robert Royall,
said some people "who had a good sense of humor" asked him questions
that at first he thought were odd.
"They
would ask me, 'Well, Ambassador, do you hunt?'" Retzer told a
journalist in his office, from which he sees crows all day long.
"Those
crows were such a nuisance," said Royall, a long-time bird hunter.
"They were such pests. They killed other birds, they made a mess. But we
just made a dent" in the population.
The
crow has almost no fear of anything, including people, and is known to
steal food from school children. It is also a fast breeder, laying four
to five pale blue-green eggs twice a year.
2 comments:
Leo Dar ni safi kwa sabaua ya ziara ya Obama. Ngoja wiki moja ipite mji utachufuka tena!
Gorgeous!
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